The Future of China

The Chinese could have set up a maritime empire if that's what they chose to do, but they didn't. China has maintained maximal land borders to protect itself from foreign invasion across land corridors over the couple of thousand years of its imperial history. I do not believe that the Chinese have any aspiration at all to physically occupy any other country in East Asia, let alone beyond East Asia. What China however seeks to do is to consolidate its continental periphery,. And beyond that, through the Belt and Road Initiative, to cause these countries across the Eurasian continent more broadly to be economically codependent with China.